Grand Prize Winner 2025 National Gingerbread House Champion
In November 2025, Mary Hulsman won Grand Prize at the National Gingerbread House Competition, the largest event of its kind in the country.
The Olympics of Gingerbread
Every November, the historic Omni Grove Park Inn in Asheville hosts the National Gingerbread House Competition. What began in 1992 as a handful of houses built by locals now draws pastry professionals and devoted hobbyists from across the country, with coverage on Good Morning America, the TODAY Show, Food Network, and the Travel Channel.
The rules are unforgiving: every entry must be 75% gingerbread and 100% edible — no wire armatures, no foam, no shortcuts. Judges score appearance, originality, creativity, difficulty, precision, and theme consistency across four brackets — Adult, Teen, Youth, and Child — for a share of more than $40,000 in prizes.
The 2025 competition returned after Hurricane Helene forced the previous year's cancellation, and set a record: 235 entries from 25 states. Read more in Forbes.
The Tiny Gnome Builders
Mary's winning piece took 500 hours across two years. She began the piece for the 2024 competition, but when that was cancelled due to Hurricane Helene, she carefully preserved what she had built, and continued to work on the piece to enter into the 2025 competition. Her village of five topsy-turvy cottages — shingled roofs, curling ivy, gnomes poring over blueprints — was rendered down to the last detail. Every element is edible. The Grand Prize piece spends the following year on a rotating display at the Omni Grove Park Inn, seen by some 20,000 holiday visitors.
Credentials:
“Fastidious perfection!”
Jae Park, Judge, National Gingerbread Competition
Mary’s Bakehouse is operated out of our home kitchen in Concord, North Carolina. Mary delighted customers in Illinois with her cookies for 5 years as the sole baker of My Mom’s Homemade Cookies.
After way too many years in full-time accounting, she is firing up her ovens again to cater to all your cookie needs.
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